“I hate to say it, but TikTok is a really good platform to discover.” New artists speak out about virality and if TikTok is helping the industry...
Say you’re a new artist, you don’t have a label and you’re trying to get yourself out there, you sign up to the most popular social media app there is; TikTok. There are many trends that people are using to gain viewers and following what’s trending on the algorithm, so your content makes it onto the ‘for you’ page. Many artists are using their songs over slides of pictures of similar sounding mainstream bands, captioning it ‘I didn’t know they released this song’ which draws people in. Others are using pictures of popular films or TV shows, captioning them ‘this song should’ve made the cut’ or ‘if this is your vibe, then you’ve found your new favourite artist’ to gain traction. But is getting a viral song what artists want? Or is TikTok ruining the industry?
Master Peace (Peace Okezie), an indie artist from South-London shared his thoughts on the app and how it’s affected his career so far. Peace recently debuted his first album ‘How to Make a Master Peace’ and sold out every date on his UK tour which included selling out Scala in London. During the build up to his album release, I came across his music from it being in videos with stills from the film Saltburn, which came out around the same time. The slides had pictures of the scenes saying, “If you’ve seen this film and wanted THAT song, then you’ve just found it” with his single “I Might Be Fake” over the top. The song was never in the movie, but he used this technique of getting people hooked by something familiar and that was trending, to drop his own music in that had a similar sound and style.
He said, “I feel like people want to discover something new, and Tik Tok, I hate to say it is a really good platform to discover.”
“I'd rather that, I'd rather build it properly. But a viral moment would be nice. It'd be great. But it's kind of like, I want to keep my integrity. I'm not making music to be a trend. if I'm making music because I know, my shit sticks.”
Peace released an EP in 2019 and has been putting in the groundwork with his music from the beginning, from when he first started off performing in local pubs and to eventually signing with PMR Records in 2022. Since the release of his album in 2023, Peace spoke about virality and how most labels require you to create content for the app now, with some artists only wanting to create music that will go viral and not being able to keep up with the buzz once they do. “Have we lost the art in what we’re doing here? I'd rather look back and be like, everything I put out is because I wanted to put it out. And I'm happy with it and I'm proud of it. Then put out a song that I only did to go viral, and it didn't go viral. That’s just on my discography and now people get to see that forever. And that scares me.”
TikTok is trying to help up and coming artists though. A new scheme called the ‘Artist Account’ means signed artists can now list their songs on a tab on their profile, they can pin their most popular videos and, they can also create explainer clips for ‘behind the scenes’ on songs so that they come up more on the discovery page. ‘The Artist Account is a toolbox of features and promotional tools developed to forge a closer relationship between artist and fan on TikTok. Now available to every artist or musician that has released music, the Artist Account is the shop window for fans to learn more about your music, creative process and to discover the latest releases.’ – TikTok Newsroom 2023.
Having a shop floor for fans to interact with, discovering new releases and unseen content allows artists to cater their content to how they want to be presented. It also allows artists to be more authentically themselves instead of creating an online persona that may not have a long-lasting audience as it won’t always fit with what’s on trend.
This is what another smaller artist is doing with her account.
23-year-old country artist, Bailey Tomkinson is a musician from Cornwall who has been compared to the likes of Taylor Swift, despite not being signed to any label. She has recently been added to the line up to support Simple Minds at the Wyldes Festival this summer and shared about her experiences of using TikTok and how it’s helped her music. “I put it off for a bit because my favourite artists from the 70’s didn’t have to do things like that, and I prefer it being natural. But I’m really happy I’ve invested my time into it because it’s grown my numbers and listeners so much!”
Many of Bailey’s videos reference the iconic Fleetwood Mac, famously known for having a couple in the band, much like Baileys own band which has her partner as her guitarist. Her content has many pictures of 70’s surf girls, cowboy outfits and vintage pictures which reflect the style she’s going for, giving viewers a deeper insight to who she is as an artist and how she wants to be perceived. Much like Master Peace, she also jumped on the trend of using her music alongside pictures from the Amazon Prime show, ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ which is also based around the 70’s with the main star resembling Stevie Nicks.
“I’m really into aesthetics and fashion which I like to make a big part of my social media platforms, I get to style things to my taste which definitely helps the algorithm with what works nicely together. Our music and fashion are in-keeping of the ‘70’s band’ style that my fans have been really interacting with.” Bailey’s insight shows how important it is for new artists to stay true to themselves and use the platform to be more creative with your image and not lose yourself to the latest trends.
Social media as a whole has its trends. MySpace being the main app in the early 2000’s, Tumblr being renowned in 2013 for its indie/grunge aesthetic and being a base for bands such as The 1975 and Arctic Monkeys. Every app has its peak and TikTok is there now.
TikTok, formally known as Musical.Ly, was bought by a Chinese company called ByteDance in 2018. It became hugely popular during the pandemic in 2020, with people having more free time to create videos and share their experiences, while others were happy to scroll and interact with what the app offered. Many artists and songs went viral in lockdown giving users from that time a sense of nostalgia when they hear those songs now. Hits such as Doja Cats ‘Say So’ had over 20 million videos made to this song, leading her to over 900 million streams on Spotify and being her second most streamed song on Spotify. Many artists broke through during this time too and ‘blew up’ gaining a huge influx of followers on social media and listens on streaming services, some who were already well known. But as mentioned, social media is ever changing and what may be the current app now, may be completely different in a couple of years.
What does this mean for artists on TikTok right now? Is it worth investing your time making content on the app?
Master Peace “I think for new artists now. I think they got to remove the ego, of like, I'm too good for this. I've heard a lot of this type of stuff, like people will be like, ah, but Arctic Monkeys were never on TikTok or this person will never wanted to. But what I didn't realize is, in life, there's always a time, in 5 years’ time people might be on this new app and are like ‘why would I need to use this when I’m on TikTok’. You’ve got to keep up appearances.” People have always jumped from one app to another, it can be down to what’s trending at the time or if updates and laws have been put in place. Tumblr for example lost over 100 million page views after 2018 as the app banned any pornography and sexually explicit content after Apple identified child pornography on the iOS app.
Something similar is currently affecting TikTok. With news in the US of the President signing a bill for the Chinese company ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban, will users go elsewhere? TikTok has over 170 million US users and the law bill has been put into place as US authorities are concerned that the Chinese state is accessing data from the app. They believe that app is controlled by the Chinese government to manipulate the algorithm and collect users’ data for ‘traditional espionage operations. If TikTok did decide to follow legislation and sell the app, not only would it affect the millions of people using it, but the whole application would have to change its data rules meaning small businesses or artists who use the data to promote themselves globally would be affected. Some of the data that TikTok has access to is from users IP addresses, location data, if a user likes or comments on a video and if someone swipes off a video which can all be helpful in marketing.
With everything considered, is TikTok a good thing or a bad thing for in the industry? It may be a mix of both allowing artists to reach new users that may not be on other social media platforms, it also allows for people to be more creative and show audiences a side to themselves that they may not be able to on other sites and currently enables their videos to reach people worldwide. But TikTok may only be a temporary base for people to promote themselves, as we’ve seen over the years people hop from one trend to another depending on what’s current. It’s also down to artists themselves on if virality is something they want, or if they want to stay true to themselves. It’s also down to us as an audience, whether we want to accept someone’s success if they’ve only gone viral or if they’ve just used TikTok to build on what they already have.
